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Yeah, the Marty Stu label might be unhelpful. I agree with you as to the importance of being able to empathize with a character, but I really can't do that with Kirito. Every episode (or rather "story") basically hits the reset button on Kirito. It's difficult to feel for Kirito's past pain and hardships when Kirito doesn't act like he experienced those tragedies.

You can take the Kirito from the beginning of Ep 1, Ep 2, Ep 3, Ep 4, Ep 5, and Ep 7 and they are essentially the same character: skilled SAO player but kind of a loner, slightly socially awkward, but willing to help others.

I detailed my interpretation on how Kirito changes throughout the side stories back in the previous episode thread. I'm not going to rehash that stuff here so feel free to look through my post history if you're interested. Whether or not you agree with me is up to you.

Another lulz-worthy moment from this episode though: apparently falling a few hundred feet into a dragon's nest will almost kill you, but falling thousands of feet off the side of the mountain gets you warmly embraced by a pink-haired cutie and a transition to her forge before you hit the ground and go splat.

To be fair there is a ceiling up there, so it's unlikely they're "thousands of feet in the air" and characters being able to teleport back to town isn't a new idea for this anime so their transition to town was probably just a matter of grabbing a crystal and shouting the town name.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrPopo

I detailed my interpretation on how Kirito changes throughout the side stories back in the previous episode thread. I'm not going to rehash that stuff here so feel free to look through my post history if you're interested. Whether or not you agree with me is up to you.

Agreed, there are changes in the way Kirito acts around others. There is character growth there, sure he's not emo-whining about the bad things that happened to him a year ago, but his character has gone through changes since ep1. He just doesn't talk about the reasons why he's changed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrPopo

That being said, I did find it interesting that Liz commented on the warmth of Kirito's hand being a result of "virtual data", yet at the end she contradicts herself by saying that it was "something real". Seems she's having trouble discerning fake from reality, or she simply doesn't care anymore. Either way, it's an interesting thing for the show to build upon.

After spending well over a year in a virtual world, I imagine some of your memories of the real world would feel more fake than what you see everyday.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lightbringer

What's unlikely is not that he ran into girls but rather that he ran into the few cute ones. I am sure that the majority of the female population of Aincrad is not on the level of Asuna & co. They are geek gamers after all. You can probably count the pretty ones on one hand (though you might have to use binary notation)

It's anime though, there are no non-cute girls ^^
At least, I haven't seen any named girls that weren't attractive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lightbringer

First floor was one month. I haven't really been keeping track of the timeline on an episode by episode basis but if we go with 16 months for the other 69 floors or so we'd end up with 16*30/69=6.9 days per floor. So that estimate seems pretty accurate.

It's not my math, nor am I claiming credit for it... but someone did the math in the anime threads and that's the numbers they came up with.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quadratic

...Unless you think reverse foreshadowing is relevant or I couldn't figure out tracking friends is possible from this episode alone...

I was more pointing out the fact that Asuna's friend list last episode has Liz's name on it. In addition to a cast of other people we haven't met yet, but who may or may not be important. It also reminds us there are places that player's can't escape from using crystals (again, may or may not be important) and that you can't always track people on your friend's list (may/may not).

But the show is using it's building blocks of MMO knowledge we've picked up from past episodes. Teleport crystals / item durability (we saw that multiple times this episode).

You missed a digit. There are 10,000 players, not 1,000. So he's run into 7 girls out of 500. It's pretty unlikely, but not absurdly unlikely. Must be his charisma stat.

Actually running into or even knowing 7 girls with such numbers is not unlikely, more like common or easy. The unlikely scenario being some of them fell for him.

From the last MMORPG I played we had around a 10K population for our server from which on average there 2.5K online at a time. I was in two different guilds and in both 1 out of 5/6 members were real girls. Each guild with 30-40 members and 6-7 girls each side. And if people argue they were all men, well one guild was from my own country and met them during reunions, while the other guild saw the photos of their reunions too. Also the same average proportion of 1 out of 5/6 being a real girl applies to SAO if you watch stills from EP1 after the mirror scene. Oh and falling in love with someone you met in an MMO and even marrying outisde the game is not uncommon, from my previous example we had a total of six couples, three ended in marriage O.O

Good episode and Kirito isn't as dense as people say he is obviously see that Liz cared for him even thought he couldn't return her feelings he still wanted to be her friend. A real stand up guy that Kirito.

Fun episode. Kirito's pretty bored and would like to advance; his armor and resists are superb and nothing can really threaten him. However, his dps is still kinda lacking and the last boss dropped a pair of worthless blues that wouldn't befit a level 10. He goes to try and find a blacksmith. Sadly, all she has are nub weapons and thus they go hunting to grind materials. If I were in this world, and realized I had to grind things, I probably would have wished I was dead now and find a way to complain on the internet about how badly designed the game is.

Of course, an elite monster comes out but they survive. Liz crafts a decent weapon that will probably last a few levels til Kirito feels like he needs to find a better one and sell it again.

Good episode overall, but that random love thing was lolwut. Get to the main plot already!

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I had been wondering Lisbeth was named for Lisbeth Salander of Steig Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, due to the fact that it seems like the most likely manner someone in Japan like Reki Kawahara would be exposed to the distinctly Nordic name, and the fact that Kawahara's works both deal with computers etc, and Larsson's Lisbeth is an accomplished computer hacker.

After this episode though, I can say that even if SAO Lisbeth was named for Lisbeth Salander, she is NO way based on Salander. Their personalities are about 180 degrees from each other, SAO Lisbeth being a clingy tsundere while Larsson's Lisbeth is a independent computer hacker with a dark past and a penchent for "punk" outfits. Also, seeing as she's from Sweden, I doubt Salander had SAO Lisbeth's low cold tolerance problem!

That, and if Lisbeth Salander was trapped in Sword Art Online, she'd probably hack into the game, log everyone out, deduce Kayaba Akihiko's location from his IP address or something, inform the authorities, and end this whole Sword Art Online crisis in all of 15 minutes! (And the bizarre crossover plot bunnies are bouncing around in my head again).

Tune in next time to hear my theory on how Kuroyukihime of Accel World could be

Overall pretty solid episode. As always love how Kirito only dodges when he actually needs to. Just slashing at the breath attack without being phased at all by it. Plus just get to see his slow progression and how events of the past have their effect. Watching Sachi die like that made him all the more cautious (with the precautions he took with Silica and Liz here) and on top of that he'd rather die with someone than survive but watch them die. At least this episode seems to have helped his mindset a bit that it's all the better to survive together.

Liz definitely had some serious progression from start to finish. Searching for something real that she could hold onto while surviving in this world and then stepping aside when it came to Kirito. Was well into that confession when Asuna showed up. But I suppose continuing to go after a guy her friend clearly likes and doing it right after she shows up all worried was too much for her.

Did like Kirito's reaction part way through that confession though. Could see the gears starting to move in that head of his .

Considering that Kirito's current sword in this episode is the same one featured in the opening, I would've liked to see how he got it. Lizbeth's description of the sword seems to hint at its status (a demon sword) as a special drop from a special monster of sorts, and I think it's unfortunate that this sword suddenly appears out of the blue in Kirito's hand, at the begining of this episode. Hopefully, a flashback one day...?

Overall, it was an entertaining episode, even though the main story seems to jump a bit too much more than I would've liked. After the second episode or so, it seems a lot has been skipped in favour of fastforwarding Kirito into a high-levelled solo player and Asuna into a major player in some big name guild. I like my fluff too from time to time, but I can't help but feel that there's this huge chunk of content that's missing.